


In a Sweater Poorly Knit

by Eatmyposey



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, post trk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 06:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6944305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eatmyposey/pseuds/Eatmyposey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You let me get really drunk and let me get a tattoo of MewithoutYou lyrics?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	In a Sweater Poorly Knit

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by [Christa](http://malieatate.tumblr.com/)....bless her patience.

Adam doesn’t drink. Logically to him it makes no sense. He’s seen the best of people become someone they’re not, or perhaps someone they are, under the influence of alcohol. No one ever pressures him into it. It’s easy for him to sit back and quietly watch his friends lose themselves. In fact, he appreciates the way the liquor coaxes out easy smiles he hasn’t seen in months. He’d much prefer to sit back and watch Henry perform a medley of Madonna to a horrified Blue curled up in Gansey’s lap. He knows her mortification is false and she’s really just grateful that she has a lap to sit in when just a few months ago she was looking at said owner of lap’s lifeless body in the middle of the road. 

He can see it happen before it even happens. He knows Henry will stumble and either  
A. Crash into Ronan himself, who’s sprawled out on the floor, in between Adam’s legs or  
B. Knock into Opal, who’s just entered the room with a handful of Chainsaw. Either option detrimental to his health.

 

Instead, Henry goes with a combo of the two and gets a result even Adam Parrish couldn’t predict. Henry crashes to the floor, Ronan catches him with a steady hand and simply says a quiet “watch yourself,” lacking his usual venom. He takes a sip of his beer and pets Chainsaw who flew onto Adam’s knee in the commotion. Adam raises his eyebrows in surprise, mostly to himself, the others have already moved on, laughing at Henry’s expense.

He watches Ronan coo quietly at Chainsaw. He’s almost used to this now. He remembers one time hearing Gansey call the Ronan they once knew, Ronan After, meaning Ronan After Niall’s death. He tried to categorize him using the same method now and found it impossible. How could someone with so much tragedy have such a simple dichotomy to them? Impossible. He’s a million things at once. 

He’s angry, irrational Ronan after Niall’s death, stubborn, confused Ronan after Aurora’s unmaking, heartbroken, destroyed Ronan after Gansey’s stint on the Ley Line, empty, hollow Ronan after Noah’s disappearance. 

Adam likes to let himself believe that he helps sometimes. He catches a happy Ronan in between dreams at the barns, in stolen glances, halfway smirks, Ronan’s calloused hands on Adam’s after a day working at the Barns. 

He thinks that essentially he is happy now. They’re all happy and lucky to be alive, but it’s hard for them to be truly happy about being alive without thinking of the dead boy who brought them together in the first place. Adam glances over at Noah’s empty room, it reminds him that Noah existed, they all exist, this thing between him and Ronan exists. 

Adam lets out a heavy sigh, which allows Ronan to sink into him further. It doesn’t make sense really, to miss someone who was technically never really “there,” or only visible to them. If a pop punk skater boy changes your life for the better and no one’s around to see him, did he ever exist at all? Adam would like to think so, but then again, he doesn’t like to think about it too much.

Point being, Adam Parrish needed to always be in control. His mind quickly flashes to his hands around Ronan’s neck, then tied behind his back blindfolded. No eyes, no hands, and one good ear. But no, that wasn’t him. He’s heard Ronan say it so much he’s almost starting to believe it. 

Given this, and his past: his mouth connected to his trailer park home’s floor, gravel on the heels of his hands, a broken Jack Daniel’s bottle whizzing past his good ear, it’s understandable why he would want to keep away from alcohol. But people can move on, or repress, and college is different.

Adam Parrish doesn’t drink.

Adam Parrish wakes up in his dorm, with a stinging on his wrist and the taste of whiskey in his mouth.He groans and rolls over, seeing his roommate in a similar condition on the other side of their small room.

 

“What’s up Virginia? Never seen you get that wild before, you were actually kinda lovey and weepy. How much do you remember?”

“What do you mean weepy? Last I remember we were on our way back here.”

“Yeah dude we were but then we passed by that tattoo shop on the way and you wouldn’t shut the fuck up about Roman or whatever so we took you in an-“

 

Adam looks down at his wrist, making the connection between the tingling and his roommates story right away. He slaps his hand over his face and groans lying back down on the bed. He peeks at his wrist.In small writing on the inside of his right wrist are the words “only you exist.”

 

He takes a quiet almost threatening breath, it reminds him of Ronan, he flushes in embarrassment looking at the tattoo again. He looks over at his roommate. “You really let me get drunk and get a tattoo of MewithoutYou lyrics?”

“You should have heard yourself man, even I fell in love with “Roman”the way you were talking about some kind of dreamy bullshit. It’ll be fine. We’re in the city, we’re young, it’s spring, this is like your first official welcome to college ‘ginia don’t get so down on yourself”

Adam makes a face at the nickname and rolls his eyes burying himself further in the bed. He’ll deal with this later.

Later comes sooner than he expected of course. Because that’s the way life works.

 

Adam napped for all of 20 minutes before he had to start his long day of back to back to back classes. It was easier for him to smush all of his classes into two days so that he keep his availability open for work and other things on the remaining days. The fact that he even had the luxury now of setting aside time for “other things” made him happy, even if “other things” usually entailed a skype session with Blue, or a regular old phone call with Gansey when Henry and Blue made him feel things. Both Blue and Gansey loved to talk. Adam was good at listening.

Adam was not keen on listening when it was 3 in the morning and he was still nursing a slight hangover dead asleep in the comfort of his small twin bed. He wakes groggily feeling his phone vibrate on the pillow next to him. 

Without checking the Caller ID, he picks up the phone and croaks out a tired “Gansey I know time is circular and all that and it’s probably not buttfuck AM wherever y’all are right now, but I’m very tired and I’m sure neither Henry or Blue would mind if you wanted to be the little spoon. Ronan’s the li-“

He’s cut off by a voice that’s not Gansey, or Blue, or Henry, and suddenly he’s wide awake. 3AM and Ronan Lynch is almost always a deadly mix. He sits up, back against the wall.

“Buttfuck AM? I guess I really am rubbing off on you Parrish.”

Adam smiles to himself at the sound of Ronan’s voice. He’s not sure if it’s always been this pleasant to listen to or if it softened out when the rest of Ronan’s pointy edges blurred. Upon hearing that Ronan’s in no immediate danger, Adam sighs and sinks back down into his pillows.

 

“Personally, I don’t think you’re rubbing off on me enough.” He makes a point of not flattening out his accent knowing it always gets a reaction out of Ronan. Only now, no reaction, there’s only silence on the other line.

“Ronan? You still there?”

He pulls the phone away making sure there’s still someone on the other line. Another beat passes and just as Adam’s really beginning to worry, Ronan gives out a small sigh.

“Yeah I’m here.” Another long silence.

“Not that I don’t love listening to you breathe but it is three in the morning, you gonna tell me what’s goin’ on over there? Are the kids doin’ alright?”

Ronan scoffs loudly and Adam smiles, he knows how much Ronan pretends to hate it when Adam refers to any of his dream things as his kids.

“Chainsaw’s right here. Opal’s in Matthew’s room probably tearing up something, who the fuck knows.”

“So, any particular reason for the call?”

Adam hears a rustling on the other line, it kind of sounds like Chainsaw’s being put back in her cage.

“Just miss you s’all” Ronan answers quietly

“Sorry what was that? I don’t think I heard you?”

“I said I miss you all right Parrish. Fuck. Forget it I’ll let you go.”

The line goes dead and Adam lays there confused for a few minutes. They still bicker almost constantly but it’s been a while since Ronan’s snapped at him like that. He usually only gets like that when-

“Shit.” Adam quickly calls Ronan back. Ronan picks up on the second ring, another indication that he’s probably not ok.

“Sorry for being a dick. Did you have a nightmare?” Adam feels awful. For all the times this semester he’s called Ronan and wasted his time just breathing at him, he owes him at least the courtesy to not act like an asshole on the rare occasion that Ronan calls first.

“You’re not my babysitter Parrish.”

“I know-“

“It wasn’t even like a nightmare. I almost would have liked that better, at least it would have been…something.”

Adam waits for him to go on.

 

“It’s like the absence of a nightmare you know? Sometimes I wake up and I swear I see him there, like a flicker of him, like how he always would fucking creep in the corner, then I look again and nothing. 

Makes me feel weird y’know? And then tonight I woke up and Chainsaw wasn’t in her cage and Opal wasn’t in the room, I kinda freaked, thought I was alone again. I don’t know it’s fucking stupid.”

Adam knows the exact feeling. Months ago Adam would have said that this is the longest he’s ever heard Ronan talk without a sarcastic quip or backhanded insult. But months ago things were different. Adam is suddenly reminded that Noah isn’t the only person Ronan has lost in the past months. Aurora is dead, he hasn’t seen Matthew, two of his best friends are traveling the world, and his asshole boyfriend can’t answer the phone without being a dick about it.

“You know we’ve fought dream dragons and demons but this is the hardest. I know it doesn’t make it any better, but I miss him a lot too.”

He can almost hear Ronan loosen up as he settles into his bed, the loose smile on his face.

“God you’re corny Parrish.”

The rude but familiar tone in Ronan’s voice makes the deflection loosen the tension. Adam’s heart does a weird thing in his chest and his wrist tingles in pain. He’s reminded of his tattoo: “only you exist.”

For all that he knows, Ronan loves the barns, he knows he loves his friends just as much, and he’s sure that with a full house surrounded by his dream things and dream family, Ronan would be happy. It has to be hard to be out there basically on his own, especially after the previous year they all had become so co-dependent on one another.

He feels a little sick at the thought of Ronan sitting in his room all alone with his bird trying to decide if he should call his boyfriend or not out of fear of disturbing him. Adam scoffs at the idea of Ronan ever bothering him with a phone call and wonders if Ronan himself realizes just how much Adam Parrish would do for Ronan Lynch  
He’s it for Adam. And he finds comfort in the fact that the feeling is mutual.

“You falling asleep on me? I’ll let you go. Really I’m good now.”

Adam knows now not to push.

“Yeah I’m gonna doze off. I’ll text you tomorrow?”

“Probably won’t answer but sure.” Ronan replies, sounding a little more like himself now. Or at least a version of himself. “Goodnight Adam.”

Adam smiles at the use of his first name. “Night Ronan, I’ll see you soon.”

He hangs up the phone, wondering if he has enough free time this weekend to make a trip to the Barns. He thinks Ronan could probably use a visit, and he wouldn’t mind seeing Ronan himself. 

When Adam pulls up outside the Barns early the next morning he’s an equal mix of excited and nervous. Excited to see Ronan of course, and nervous for Ronan to see him. On the long drive up Adam had changed shirts about 7 times trying to decide if he should show off his new tattoo or not. Self conscious about the meaning behind it, he has settled on a long sleeve burgundy thermal with a thumbhole worn in one side. In the middle of the spring. And Adam’s supposed to be the logical one. The thermal though, did the job of stretching over the plastic covering the new tattoo, but also caused Adam a bit of discomfort. He winced as he sat in the idle BMW parked on the gravelly driveway of the barns.

He’s brought out of his reverie by a gust of cold air and a small girl at his side.

“Adam!” She screeches at a decibel too high to be let out by a regular human. She tugs at his shirt trying to drag him out of the car. He pretends like she doesn’t weigh less than 50 pounds and like her pull actually has an effect on him. 

He’s dragged from the car and met chest to chest with a wall of Ronan Lynch. He pretends like he’s not the greatest thing he’s ever seen. 

Ronan eyes him, his face twisting into pleasant surprise before a cool mask of faux nonchalance is put in it’s place.

“The fuck are you doing here Parrish? Finally get sick of looking at the frat boys buying each other’s friendships?”

Adam shrugs, not saying anything.

“So you’re gonna drag your ass all the way out here and then not say shit? C’mere I wanna show you something.” Chainsaw squawks and appears out of nowhere pecking at some kind of insect that’s too bright to be real. She lands on Ronan’s shoulder and Adam’s still a little dumbfounded. 

Ronan scoffs, turns and starts walking away. It’s obviously not Adam’s first time at the Barns, or his first time seeing Ronan’s many products of sleepless nights, but right now, standing there outside the barns with Ronan’s creations in the spectacularness of it all, Adam is suddenly self conscious about his drunken tattoo choice.  
He knows Ronan loves him, but in the grand scheme of things, what was to stop him from creating someone just like Adam and pulling him out of his dreams instead. Someone with less baggage, someone who doesn’t only feel important when he’s working 3 jobs, someone who knows exactly what to say all the time, someone a little easier to love. Adam’s wrist weighs about a thousand pounds and his heart even more. “Only you exist” on the inside of his wrist is taunting him. Sure that’s true for him; Adam does not exist, only Ronan. But for Ronan, he could easily pull something better into existence. He pulls his sleeves down over his hands even more. If he still had Cabeswater he would ask it to grow vines around his arms to hide his wrist forever. 

He didn’t realize that Ronan had stopped about halfway back to the house.

“What’s up with you Parrish. You’re not gonna follow?”

“I’m coming asshole.”

He jogs up to Ronan and as Ronan reaches for his wrist to drag him in for a proper greeting, his hand grazes the sore spot. Adam tries not to wince too audibly and draws his hand back. Ronan looks hurt then confused in a span of 1 second, then on the verge of a different familiar emotion.

He leans in to try to take Adam’s hand but Adam dodges him again and walks past him suspiciously holding his arm behind his back.

“What’d you want to show me? Let’s go!” Adam says.

 

Ronan doesn’t budge. “Adam. What the fuck is going on?” He carefully pronounces every syllable. 

Adam looks anywhere but in Ronan’s eyes when he replies ‘nothing.’ That seems to set Ronan off more than anything. And ah, there’s that other familiar emotion back again. Raw Ronan Rage.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ll fucking kill him. He did this to you again?”

Ronan glides past Adam not waiting for an answer, making sure to not push him out of the way. He aggressively yanks his keys off the counter nearby and makes his way towards the car. He’s fuming, even Chainsaw and Opal stay out of the way. Realization hits Adam and he calls after Ronan.

“Shit. No, come back it’s not that!”

 

Ronan turns around sharply. “You don’t have to lie for him any more, I can see you’re in pain Adam. I didn’t finish at Aglionby but I’m not a fucking idiot. You forget we watched you do this for years, all this hiding shit. I should-“

 

“I know you’re not an idiot, I am”

 

Adam assumes this would make Ronan even more angry before the words leave his mouth but instead Ronan deflates and softens; his eyes piercing Adam’s. “None of this is you fault. It never has been”

Adam huffs out a small breathless laugh and shakes his head at an increasingly confused Ronan. 

“God, my piece of shit dad didn’t even have anything to do with this. It was all me I swear. It’s nothing. I’m just embarrassed s’all,” Adam replies picking at the sleeve of his sweater.

Ronan smiles at the small twang in Adam’s voice and carefully grabs Adam’s hand palm up and begins tracing the ever so familiar lines on his hand.

Adam finally budges and slowly lifts up his sleeve showing off the small tattoo.  
Ronan holds it up closer to his face to get a better look. Up that close he can probably see the small arrangement of freckles lining the inside of Adam’s thumb. Adam is suddenly more self conscious than before.

“What’s this?” Ronan asks.

 

Adam’s other hand pulls up behind his head scratching at the nape of his neck, one of his tells.

“I got it a few nights ago…I was a little drunk”.

Adam’s not expecting Ronan’s reaction to this, but then again, this is Ronan. Unpredictable and wreckless. Ronan drops his hand quickly.

“The fuck Parrish, since when do you drink?” he says harshly with hint of bitterness.  
Adam winces and aggressively pulls his sleeve back down to hide the tattoo.

“Oh, hey Lynch, pot, meet kettle. God you’re an asshole”. 

He watches Ronan deflate, hurt in his eyes, and that’s when Adam gets it.

Sometimes looking at Ronan’s eyes was a little too much like looking into his own, he never got the answers he needed. He could tell that Ronan hadn’t been upset that Adam had been drinking, it was something else. He felt like he was missing stuff, Adam felt it too. They had an understanding but it was hard. It was impossible for them to be with each other every second of every day. Adam did love college, and Ronan did love watching Adam love college. But, still, it was hard. Ronan had missed out on Adam’s first drink but Adam knew he felt like he missed much more.

“C’mere let’s sit” Adam drags Ronan into the living room and they sit next to each other on the couch, knees touching. Argument or not Adam is not missing out on an opportunity to touch Ronan. They’re quiet for a good five minutes. They never really need words to fill up their space but still Adam sighs and starts to talk again. 

“You know when I got this it wasn’t even my first time drinking. My first time drinking I called you. We fought about something stupid and you didn’t even know I was buzzed. By the end of the call you weren’t even in the same room as the phone, remember?

Ronan smiles lightly, “Yeah, you called me picking a fight about some bullshit. I thought you were just in your usual pissy mood so I turned on that stupid Emotown playlist Noah made and I left my phone and slept in the other room.” 

He notices the slight pause taken before he says Noah, and he understands. He too knows the feeling, sometimes it feels like if you don’t mention him he never existed, but of course he did. They still bicker and fight as much as they used to before, only now instead of hanging up or storming off, they’ll stay on the line quiet or just walk across the room, scared to ever leave anything off on a bad note. When you’re young and you’ve lost someone like they have, ghost or not, everything is significant. You wonder if every goodbye is the last time you’ll get to say it. 

Adam smiles sadly at the memory.

The closest person Adam ever lost to him was Noah, and Gansey briefly. At the time, he knew both were inevitable and it still hurt just as bad. During the moments after Gansey’s death, looking at Ronan crying in the road, Adam had almost felt sadder for Ronan than for himself. Ronan, who seemed to have a knack for discovering the dead bodies of his loved ones. In a way, Adam still felt like he was always too broken, too poor, not enough for the group of friends, so having to watch Gansey die, that was payback for all the time that he’d wasted pretending to be anything other than Trailer Park Parrish. 

When they discovered they could sacrifice Cabeswater to save one Richard Campbell Gansey, Adam had given up his powers even quicker than he acquired them in the first place. When he separated from Cabeswater he thought he would wipe his hands on his coveralls, and walk away from all things magic, “gigs up, back to being unknowable”. But when Gansey woke and Ronan choked back a watery laugh and still looked at Adam like he hung the moon in the sky regardless of Cabeswater or not, Adam had felt for the first time that he was enough. He did that.

 

“I felt weird, like you had somehow passed the phone to Noah and he was there again. Y’know how he would just be there and it was enough. And that song was playing when I passed out, so yesterday when I drank again I thought about you, and-“

 

“I totally Pavlov’ed you” Ronan says with a smile. Adam ignores the moisture at the back his eyes.

 

“Shut up lemme continue”

Ronan nudges their shoulders together.

“Always so serious, Parrish” He wraps his arm around Adam, his hand resting centimeters from his mouth.

Adam flashes back to a time when he had walked in on Ronan talking to Noah. Or more-so talking to Noah’s room. This was after his disappeared. Sometimes Ronan went in there to see if he would get an answer back. Ronan barely prayed anymore. He remembers hearing Ronan say how much he loved seeing “Parrish’s silly side. Adam smiles thinking about how Noah Czerny is, was? the only person who could get Ronan to use the word ‘silly’. He remembers Ronan saying that he misses seeing Adam like that, he hadn’t seen it since Noah left. He remembers vowing to not make this worse for Ronan. 

 

“Shut up. Last night, when I was drunk I thought of you”

“As you should”

“And I don’t know, I wanted to be that dude who gets tattoos and has fun and loosens up sometimes, and I thought of that night with that playlist and you weren’t even there really, but you were. And that song just kept saying “only you exist” and my fuzzy mind thought it was cool to get it on my wrist forever. But, I don’t think I regret it. I think it’s true, amongst other things…”

 

There’s a long drawn out silence, long enough for Adam to count his insecurities. Ronan turns Adam so he’s facing him. He leans in close as if he’s going for a kiss.

“Adam Parrish, I can not believe that I-“  
He leans in even closer.

 

“Allowed my boyfriend to become one of those college douchebags who listens to MewithoutYou! Holy shit, Noah put that on there ironically, he fucking hated that song!”

Adam blushes furiously and pushes away. “God, do you always have to be such a dick?”

“You are what you eat”

 

Adam rolls his eyes and is about to get off the couch and walk away when he realizes something. He dives for the table next to them and grabs Ronan’s phone. He scrolls through it quickly.

“I knew it! Why is that whole album in your recently played albums then? You’re just as bad as me”

 

Now it’s Ronan’s turn to blush. He holds his ground though. He never lies.  
“I never said anything about me. How do you think Noah heard the song in the first place? He was always more of a The Movielife, Taking Back Sunday dude himself. 

Adam bursts out laughing and Ronan looks at him again like he’s something more. When Adam quiets down, Ronan smiles Adam’s favorite smile, the one that really reaches his eyes.

 

“Pretty sure you’re it for me too Parrish”.

 

Adam leans in closely to go for a kiss but stops right before Ronan’s mouth.

“An veritas an nihil.” He breathes onto him.

 

“You know I never lie”

 

Adam closes the gap between them and kisses Ronan, slow and calculating.

In the morning, they wake up in Ronan’s bed, Adam sprawled on top of a still sleeping Ronan. Adam see’s Ronan twitch visibly and gears up for whatever terrible thing he’s pulling out of his dreams now. He looks closely at Ronan’s arm, which was twitching slightly and he sees words appearing slowly, matching the script on his wrists. The words “I do not exist” adorn Ronan’s right wrist. Gripped in his left is a small tube. Adam takes the tube and applies the cream in it to his healing tattoo. Of course Ronan would dream something to make Adam’s slight pain lessen, and his own increase. Adam kisses the inside of Ronan’s wrist, a gesture Ronan has done to him a thousand times and dozes off again against his chest. Maybe he should start drinking more often.

**Author's Note:**

> The Latin at the end is “the truth or nothing” or at least that’s what Google says, I’m not fluent in Latin I struggle with English enough.
> 
> This is a product of [Kat](http://deadnoahs.tumblr.com) telling me to listen to the greatest song ever and me being the actual mayor of Emotown/weird about these boys always. You can thank [Farah](http://nightfortruth.tumblr.com) for the Noah and Christa for actually making it make sense because before she beta’d it, I’m sure it was nonsense.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [Seriously, listen to the song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4g-3WRXIts)
> 
>  
> 
> [Come yell with me on Tumblr](http://ronanunprotected.tumblr.com)


End file.
